Badminton is an excellent sport at all levels, from the beginner level to highly skilled competitive matches. It is not only entertaining to play, but can be enjoyed by people of all sizes and skill levels. Moreover, it is an excellent sport for teaching hand-eye coordination in physical education classes as well as providing aerobic exercise. Advantageously, the sport requires minimal equipment (a net, rackets and a shuttlecock) and can be readily played indoors for year round enjoyment and teaching no matter what the climate.
Rackets have been made for a variety of playing levels, including expensive rackets of various materials such as metal, wood and/or composite materials for highly skilled players. However, such rackets can be relatively brittle and subject to breaking or damage if not used properly, such as if they are hit on a hard floor.
In institutional settings such as schools where the rackets can be expected to be heavily used by players of many skill levels, including particularly beginners, it is desirable to have rackets which will be extremely durable to withstand such use. Needless to say, schools are reluctant to buy equipment which can be expected to break in only few days based on the anticipated use (e.g., by young students first learning the game who can be expected to, inadvertently or not, hit the racket head on the floor from time to time). Thus, while badminton may seem like a sport requiring little equipment as already noted, to a school which would foresee having to buy many, many rackets due to breakage, this excellent sport could be viewed as prohibitively expensive to include in its curriculum.
To meet such needs, inexpensive and/or durable rackets have heretofore been manufactured for institutional uses such as schools. Generally conventional structure rackets have been made cheaply, but the result is, as would be expected, a low quality racket which, though cheaper to replace, will also still be subject to breakage requiring relatively frequent replacement. Such rackets can also tend to be poor to use, that is, to provide a poor feel when hitting the shuttlecock. Another racket which has been manufactured for institutional uses is a one piece combination handle and head made all of plastic. While that racket structure has provided some increased durability over rackets of other materials, the flexibility of the head makes it impossible to use conventional strings to generate the shuttlecock striking face and thus a different type of striking face has been required, resulting in a poor feel when using the racket. Thus, those taught in schools with such rackets could face an entirely new learning cycle when advancing to more conventional string face rackets.
The present invention is directed toward overcoming one or more of the problems set forth above.